Hey guys, hope everyone had a good time watching football today. My raiders got whooped

Anyways, I've decided to go ahead and get that 84 I posted about in the other thread! So I'll officially be a camaro owning member

Question:

What do you guys pay for a Dyno on your 350?

I got another chance to drive the car today and I really think it needs a tune. The car has some decent power, enough to spin both wheels at a light (posi) bit seems to loose some power going through 2nd and 3rd. I got it on the freeway ramp rolling at about 35 and punched it and was seriously disappointed in the output. I was hoping to get jerked back a bit and feel it get up and it just kind of steadily pushed along. (It has a 350 swap btw). I could tell it had net of power to go well over 100 bit the low end torque seems to be gone!

It has a performer intake and edelbrock 4bbl carb on it.

I'm really just wanting some serious torque from hot rodding around town.

I'm hoping a good tune can bring the best out of it.

What do y'all think?

 

Depends a lot on what you want to do. You can usually get a basic session where the car is strapped down and you'll get 2 or 3 pulls just to see exactly what kind of power the car can make. You can also get a tuning session where you or someone else can tune the car to make the most amount of power. These sessions could last a half or full day on the dyno and if you're lucky, just a couple of hours. Depends what you want to change or try. The most common changes is timing and jetting but it's not unheard of to change carbs, carb spacers, intakes, headers, torque converters etc while still on the dyno to see what works and what doesn't.

Never get too attached to dyno results. They're just a number and they're corrected to sea level so the same car could dyno in Florida and Denver on the same type of dyno and would have the same sea level numbers although the engine will be making far less power in Denver. Different dynos also produce different results. It's common for a Dynojet dyno to show results 9-13% higher than they really are. Like I said, it's just a number. If you're going to tune, use the same dyno every time.

One of the local chassis dynos starts at $100 for a baseline. You get 3 or more pulls until a repeatable baseline is achieved.

U-Tune dyno time is $150/hour for the first full hour and drops to 1/2 hour increments after the first hour.

Prices go up from there with power adders, fuel mapping, custom tuning etc.

I've never had my car on a dyno. I just go to the rack and race.

 

 

The dyno is just a tuning tool; handy to be able to make a change, and see the results, in real time. It is NOT a good way to "accurately" "measure" the power output of the engine; the absolute "number" it comes up with can be wildly inflated (usually is... people who run those things figured out a long time ago that people who buy time on them, want to see big #s and will go pay somebody else to provide them if they don't) or grossly understated or anywhere in between. All they're good for is to see the results of making changes.

Typical 3-pull price w no tuning is around $75 - 80; typical by-the-hour is $125 - 200, depending on how involved in "tuning" the operator becomes.

Expect to be disappointed: that is, whatever you "think" the car does, it'll actually be ALOT less.

 

A dynamometer, or dyno is used to measure how much horsepower you have. What other equipment can measure horsepower?

Drag racers know how to calculate your horsepower by using your 1/4 mile time and calculating tires and car weight, etc.

My local performance shop also charges around $80 for three pulls.

 

No piece of equipment can measure HP. A dyno measures torque. HP is a calculated result.

Torque is how much work is actually being done. HP is how quickly that work is being done.

 

Actually, it's quite easy to measure HP, with the correct instrument.

1 HP = ~735 W

All you need is an electrical generator and a load bank.

Other dynos (engine ones for example) used to use a "water brake". That's a thing kinda like a torque converter. The end result is pressure times flow; which of course, is power.

But the majority of "automotive" dynos don't work that way. A DynoJet for example, allows the wheels to accelerate at a constant rate of change in engine RPM, usually something around 200 - 250 RPM per second, for street cars. It measures the amount of load torque that must be applied to restrict the engine to that rate of RPM buildup (acceleration). So to that extent, those don't measure HP directly, they measure torque and calculate HP from that.

 

I'm in the Chicago Suburbs and had mine for $75/hr. I didn't need their wideband (already have that on board) which would have been $100/hr or their "tuning services which would have been $150/hr. Everyone I called about had Mustang dynos too.

 

shop in colorado charges $80 for 3 pulls.

 

Buy a wideband o2 kit and timing light do it yourself on the street

 

X2,but at the track.